NRA surprisingly credited with crafting new anti-gun laws

​The tides may be turning within the National Rifle Association: according to a new report, America’s largest gun-lobbying group has helped advance three bills recently that limit firearm ownership, and more could soon be added to that list.

On Tuesday this week, reporters Laura Bassett and Christina
Wilkie wrote for the Huffington Post that the NRA has all but
abandoned earlier efforts by the group to halt state legislation
that attempt to impose restrictions on legally owning guns.
Instead, the HuffPost reporters wrote, the organization’s
lobbyists have worked directly with lawmakers in order to craft
rules agreeable by both sides that force gun owners with domestic
violence records to surrender their weapons.

After nearly a decade, Bassett and Wilkie wrote, the NRA has only
recently “changed its tune” in February the group helped
advance a bill in Washington state that aims to guns out of the
hands of alleged domestic abusers. Similar bills have already
recently been advanced or approved in the states of Louisiana,
Wisconsin and Minnesota, the journalists added, and the NRA is
unexpectedly the one that deserves credit.

For practically ten years before that, the NRA took seemingly
every action possible to keep HB 1840 from being signed into law
in Washington. Initially, the bill was written so that anyone
alleged to be a domestic abuser would have to hand over their
weapons after being served with a protective order, but the NRA —
largely known for staunchly opposing attempts to infringe on the
right to own firearms — has opposed that language since it was
first considered by local lawmakers.

That changed this year, however, when the bill was passed
unanimously by the Washington legislature. The reason why,
HuffPost claimed, is that “the gun lobby made a backroom deal
with lawmakers, agreeing to drop its public opposition to it in
exchange for a few minor changes.”

Those changes, Bassett and Wilkie wrote, include altering a
provision that will now, if signed into law, allow alleged abuser
to surrender their guns to friends and family instead of the
state. And although it might only be a minor edit, it could be
monumental news for anti-violence advocates who for ages have
fought, albeit unsuccessfully, against lobbyists from the NRA who
have tried to all but abolish anything that may interfere with
the Second Amendment to the United States’ Constitution’s right
to bear arms.

The Minnesota bill is expected to meet the approval of lawmakers
there next, HuffPost reported, and the lawmakers who are
sponsoring these anti-domestic violence bills say the NRA is
becoming instrumental in helping their fight.

"The NRA has been really good to work with on this particular
issue," Minnesota State Rep. Dan Schoen (D) told the
website. "It pains me to say, but they have been."

Center for American Progress senior policy fellow Arkadi Gerney
added to the HuffPost report that the NRA’s recent about face is
welcome, but likely a calculated retreat.

“The NRA knows that their message -- which is more guns
everywhere and generally doing nothing to keep guns out of the
hands of dangerous people -- doesn't resonate very well with most
women in the United States,” Gerney said.

But be that as it may, having the NRA work side by side with
lawmakers is something that has yet to be seen even on a small
scale when it comes to the federal level. Despite the fact that
mass shootings continue to occur in the US on a routine basis,
efforts to pass national new gun restrictions — even those touted
by President Barack Obama and the White House — have been blocked
by members of Congress.